


had to meet the devil [just to know his name]

by pagan_mint



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 4
Genre: Blood, Descent into Madness, Insanity, M/M, Murder, drugs/drug abuse, onesided Ajay/Sabal, sad!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 16:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7625758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagan_mint/pseuds/pagan_mint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ajay and Sabal come to an impasse that can only be resolved in one way. Yalung's reach is further than they either thought possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	had to meet the devil [just to know his name]

**Author's Note:**

> Title lyrics from "Ghost" by Ella Henderson! Inspired by the prompt "die by your hand."

“I’m glad it’s you,” Ajay says, and it sounds like he means it. It looks like he does, too; a smile curving his perfect lips, the expression in his brown eyes genuinely complacent and happy. He’s on his knees in the dirt and the dust, a spray of blood across his face, his lips smeared with it. His left cheek is a mess, blue and black from where it was struck by the same gun now being held to his head.

“I know,” Sabal tells him, and he is proud of the fact that his voice doesn’t shake. “You understand why this has to happen. Things cannot continue like this. Your vision for Kyrat is not your father’s.”

“Maybe my father was wrong,” Ajay murmurs, and protests rise like bile in the back of Sabal’s throat – _Mohan was the only one who ever knew what was right for this country, his death is what made Kyrat fall apart, if he was here now he would do the same thing_ – but he doesn’t speak them out loud. Instead, he lets his gaze soften one more time, grazes the barrel of the gun along one familiar cheekbone, feels his own heartrate increase as Ajay closes his eyes and sucks in a sharp breath of pain.

“Ajay,” he murmurs. “Brother. Please. This isn’t how it has to end. It doesn’t have to end at all. We can rule Kyrat, side by side. Just – prove yourself loyal to me, show that you will stand by my side – ”

“I did,” Ajay interrupts him. He never would have done that, not before, but Sabal has found that being on the receiving end of a gun changes peoples’ behavior patterns. “I helped you free your country, and did everything you asked me to afterward – until you started asking me to kill innocent people.”

“They weren’t _innocent_ ,” Sabal snarls, using the gun to tilt Ajay’s chin up, redirecting his gaze to the ceiling of the cave they’re in. “They were supporters of Amita, members of the Royal Army – ”

“They were women and children,” Ajay bites, his Adam’s apple nudging against the gun. He makes no effort to fight against the way Sabal is manipulating his body, no attempt to readjust his gaze. “Families, torn apart by the war, trying to survive. You’re in charge now, you don’t need to kill people for not supporting you when you and Amita were at each others’ throats. They needed a leader they could trust, one who could – who _would_ – protect them – ”

“And that leader is you?” Sabal chokes out. He thought he’d reconciled this with himself, but now his throat tightens, his grip on the gun tightening. “A man who runs rampant, disobeys orders, betrays the vision of the country that he spent _months_ fighting for – ”

“I never fought for your vision,” Ajay says. “I fought for _you_. I stopped doing that when you started killing people for _disagreeing_ with you. I’m sorry that you can’t see why that’s _wrong_.” Now he does force his head and gaze down, looking sharply into Sabal’s eyes. “I wasn’t lying. I am glad that it’s you.”

“Why?” Sabal demands, not realizing that he wanted to ask the question until it’s out in the air between them. Ajay shrugs; an oddly lackluster motion for a man to make at death’s doorstep.

“You made me, in a way,” he responds. “It makes sense that you’d be the one to end me.”

There doesn’t seem to be anything left to say after that. Sabal steps back, breathes deep, pulls the trigger.

 *

Ajay Ghale’s body is found by a Golden Path patrol that shouldn’t have been as far up in the mountains as it was. Dissent erupts immediately throughout Kyrat; the people are enraged, but their fury is largely undirected until Rabi Ray Rana makes a grief-crazed broadcast blaming Sabal. Faster than he can keep up with it, the leader of the Golden Path abruptly finds his power stripped from him as the country ratchets into another uprising. The DJ becomes the voice for justice, and under his guidance, Amita is found – _Ajay killed her,_ Sabal thinks, sick with betrayal and anger as he hides in the Kyrati hills, _he said he killed her, he called me a liar but he lied too_ – and installed as the new leader for the country.

Sabal didn’t lead a rebellion for years without learning how to hide, so that’s what he does until he can leave Kyrat. It’s difficult, but there are those still loyal to him and his cause, and they fly him out. Hong Kong is hardly his destination of choice, but it’s large enough to afford him the anonymity he needs, and there is no shortage of work for his particular skill set.

Keeping busy proves not to be enough to stave off the creeping depression that threatens to consume him at every waking moment. Parted from the country he spent his life fighting for, separated from every connection to his land and his religion, he tries every distraction available or offered. Yoga becomes drinking, smoking becomes doing drugs, meditation becomes murder. Stripped of the meaning that it used to have, each death another step towards redemption and freedom for Kyrat, killing becomes pointless and boring – an exercise in exterminating inconvenience. It turns out that he’s good at taking lives, and better at finding new and interesting ways to do so. The “Butcher of Bangkok” is a title already taken, or else it would be given to him; his days become an endless blur of intermittent highs and lows, constructed either artificially or through a natural adrenaline rush. Some nights he doesn’t even bother to wash the blood from his hands; when he does, more often than not it remains on his fingers, staining the dark skin while Yalung hums in the back of his brain and Ajay whispers from the shadows.

 _I’m glad it’s you_ , he says, and Sabal’s lips quirk upwards in an imitation of the last smile the son of Mohan gave before he slams his fist into the cheap hotel bathroom mirror. Pain bites at the edges of the glass shards in his knuckles, drips down to matching stains on the tile floor, doesn’t get rid of his unwelcome guest. _Maybe my father was wrong. I fought for you._

The only thing that makes him go away is killing, because with every death Yalung grows louder, drowning out Ajay’s quiet understanding, the forgiveness lacing his words. Sabal doesn’t want his forgiveness, doesn’t want to hear or see him ever again. He’s contracted for more jobs, avoided by the men and women he works with. He doesn’t care about that, about them. He only cares about one man, and the blood it takes to make him go away for good.

Finally – _finally_ – it happens, either late at night or early in the morning. The time doesn’t matter. The place doesn’t matter. It’s a back alley somewhere, in a part of town where the police don’t go, hounded only by apex predators dumping the empty husks of their prey. It's three bodies, this time, and as Sabal turns from their glassy eyes and open mouths, he meets a familiar brown stare. The streak of blood stands out from Ajay’s skin, the contrast harsher than it should have been, than it was. He opens his mouth, he says the words –

“I can’t hear you,” Sabal says, and nearly startles himself with a harsh bark of sound that he thinks was meant to be a laugh. “I _can’t hear you_ , brother.” He steps forward, crouches down, presses his hand to Ajay’s face and swipes a thumb across his cheekbone. Relishes the way Ajay flinches from his touch, the way the blood tastes when he licks it from his own skin. “I can’t make you leave. But I can make you _shut up_.”

Yalung’s song screams in his mind, the broken flickering of neon back-alley lights making every shadow dance like it holds a demon. Sabal grins a grin that is more a baring of teeth, stands up, turns around.

“It’s time someone returned the favor,” says Pagan Min. He is impeccable in black-trimmed pink, and Sabal never understood why the man favored the color before but now he knows that pink is the color blood turns when you try and try and fail to wash it from your hands.

“He thanked me,” Sabal sneers. It’s only half a lie. Pagan doesn’t smile in return, and Yalung’s screams turns to shrieks, regaling his most recent victim with the tale of love and loss and lunacy he sees in the former king’s eyes.

“Of course he did.” The words are as sharp-edged as the mirror shards from earlier. “His mother taught him how to be polite.”

Sabal doesn’t feel the bullet. He doesn’t hear it. But as the world fades around him, he hears footsteps, sees a shadow crouch by his side.

“I’m glad it’s you,” he whispers, his words only partially obscured by the blood clawing its way into his windpipe. And it’s Pagan’s body, but Ajay’s smile, and if Sabal never sees it again it will be too soon.

“I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> you guys I got so sad just writing this, someone come slap my wrist with a ruler and make me stop. 
> 
> I hope y'all liked it though! Please leave a comment or kudos (or both, wink wink) if you enjoyed! <3


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